Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 14, 2015; 21(6): 1794-1803
Published online Feb 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i6.1794
Occult infection related hepatitis B surface antigen variants showing lowered secretion capacity
Hong Kim, Seoung-Ae Lee, You-Sub Won, HyunJoo Lee, Bum-Joon Kim
Hong Kim, Seoung-Ae Lee, You-Sub Won, HyunJoo Lee, Bum-Joon Kim, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Microbiology and Immunology, and Liver Research Institute, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 110-799, South Korea
Author contributions: Kim H and Kim BJ conceived this research and participated in its design and coordination; Kim H and Lee SA performed the experiments; Kim H, Lee SA, Won YS, and Lee HJ analyzed and interpreted the data; Lee SA, Won YS, and Lee HJ contributed the reagents, materials, and analysis tools; Kim H and Kim BJ wrote and reviewed the manuscript; all authors approved the final manuscript.
Supported by National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology), Grant No. 2013-005810.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Bum-Joon Kim, Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Microbiology and Immunology, and Liver Research Institute, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 103, Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-799, South Korea. kbumjoon@snu.ac.kr
Telephone: +82-2-7408316 Fax: +82-2-7430881
Received: June 10, 2014
Peer-review started: June 12, 2014
First decision: July 21, 2014
Revised: July 31, 2014
Accepted: November 7, 2014
Article in press: November 11, 2014
Published online: February 14, 2015
Processing time: 246 Days and 6.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The presently obtained data indicate that deficiency in the secretion capacity of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), but not virion, may have a pivotal function in occult infections of hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype C, at least in occult infections in South Korea. This provided new insight into the intrinsic nature of HBV occult infections, which lead to HBsAg sero-negativeness but horizontal infectivity. In addition, reactive oxidative species production via possible induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress in hepatocytes provide a probable explanation for the links between occult infection and liver disease progression.